Ramona gave him a look of reproach and entreaty. She was near tears. The man from St. Louis smiled confidently.
"I know a good thing when I see it," he whispered. "I'll ride beside you and keep off the rough-necks, Miss Wadley."
A heavy heel smashed down on the toes of his neat shoe and crunched round. A hard elbow bumped up forcefully against his chin as if by accident. A muscular hand caught the loose fat of his plump stomach and tightened like a vise. The dapper salesman opened his mouth in a shriek of pain.
"Indigestion?" asked the Ranger sympathetically, and his sinewy fingers twisted in the cushion of flesh they gripped. "I'll get you somethin' good for it in a minute."
Roberts flung the man back and rearranged the seating inside so that the drover sat beside Ramona as before dinner. Then he tucked an arm under that of the St. Louis man and led him back into the stage station. The salesman jerked along beside him unhappily. His wrist, wrenched by Roberts in a steady pressure of well-trained muscles, hurt exquisitely. When at last he was flung helplessly into a chair, tears of pain and rage filled his eyes. Never in the course of a cushioned and pampered life had he been so manhandled.
"My God, you brute, you've killed me!" he sobbed.
"Sho! I haven't begun yet. If you take the stage to-day to Tascosa I'm goin' to sit beside you real friendly, an' we'll play like we been doin' all the way in to town. It's just my way of bein' neighborly."
"I'll have the law of you for this," the city man howled, uncertain which of his injuries to nurse first.
"I would," agreed the Texan. "Well, so long, if you ain't comin'."
Roberts moved back with long, easy stride to the stage. He nodded to the driver.